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Minor Release

Added a link since some people seem to be having trouble.

Some minor fixes to correct some changes in items. Also added support for skill powers which suddenly appeared.

****************************Public Release: 11/8/2010 *****************

4.0.118
* General: Fixed the Familiar option to correctly toggle on and off based on the compendium

4.0.117
* Compendium: Fixed several issues with items that gained the useless "Published in " tag

4.0.116
* Compendium: Fixed Skill Power meta data

New Paser: 4.0.115

You can download the new version here

Updates for Essentials, Psionic Power, and the new compendium items (backgrounds, familiars, etc).

Note 1:
I tested the PHB, Arcane Power, and Psionic Power but I didn't have time to regression test all the older books.

Note 2:
There's a new version of the lore extension which offers /ilore (send lore images only), /tlore (send lore text only), /lore (send both text and images). It may fix some issues other people were having. Get get image support you must reparse modules containing npcs with the 115 parser or greater. You can download it here

Version History:
Note: to use the NPC Database features the Microsoft Office or the ACE drivers are required.
ACE drivers can be downloaded at the following address:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7554f536-8c28-4598-9b72-ef94e038c891&displaylang=en

****************************Public Release: 11/6/2010 *****************

4.0.115
* Essentials: Increased support for powers that do not have levels

4.0.114
* Compendium: Support for familiars

4.0.113
* Powers: Cascade from Dynamic tags to Benefit enabled

4.0.112
* Compendium: Support for Fey Pacts that have a level number.
* Powers: Cascade from Prerequisite to Trigger enabled

4.0.111
* Compendium: Support for more complex backgrounds like those in FR

4.0.110
* Compendium: Initial handling of backgrounds

4.0.109
* Compendium: Handling of Features that contain the Augment tag

4.0.108
* Compendium: Adjustment to processing the Augment tag

4.0.107
* NPCs: Images parsed into a node for easy ruleset access

4.0.106
* ZLINK: Support for libnpc and libtrap
* Traps: Improved formatting of Additional Description


4.0.105
* ZLINK: Added support for map (same as image), template (npc template)


4.0.104
* AltPower: Now accepts MM3 format

It all looks so......

Yay familiars

Can I see some references?

A work in progress. I think they are almost finished. The original FR backgrounds use a different format which will take some adjusting, but Arcane Power, PHB3, and Psionic Power all look to be working correctly.

Essentially...it's crap

I finally got Psionic Power working. The addition of a Paragon Path feature with an Augment tag in the middle of it, ended up being the last thing that needed fixing.

I'm not a fan of the new Essentials line. In fact the small paperbacks with HUGE type are the worst thing they've ever produced for 4E and that includes the PHB3 and Psionic Power which are both fonts of crap (Hybrids, Power Points).

However, maybe some of essential content would be useful in my campaigns. And the mechanical content doesn't seem that far off from Core content, so I decided to see how hard it would be to get the parser to work.

The biggest issue is the Utility and Attack powers without levels. But once I got that working, I got something usable. I'll need to do more auditing to be sure.

4E Lore Extension

The last public release included the following note:

* NPCs: Lore parsed into non-formattedtext nodes for easy ruleset access

That's probably a little cryptic for those who aren't experienced with ruleset creation. Essentially, formattedtext is a great tool for displaying data, but you can't (without a lot of work) do anything else with it.

Enter one of the minor annoyances I have when running my own campaign. I have a vast amount of NPC lore available to me, but it's a hassle to deliver this information to my players. I have to open the various NPC sheets, check the player skills, then drag and drop the lore frames onto the correct characters. Usually while fielding questions about the map, placing tokens, and the usual pre-combat DM tasks.
From working with DrZeuss on traps, I knew the best way to fix this problem was to store the data in both the formattedtext nodes (so it could be displayed as always) and into other nodes (numbers, strings, etc) that could be easily accessed within the ruleset. Once that was done it's just a matter of entering a single command to push the lore to my players

And so the 4E Lore extension was born:
It's actually very simple to use, but it requires modules created with a parser version 103 or higher. No file changes are required so if you have the source files for older modules, you just need to run them through the parser again. This will populate the lore nodes the extension uses.

Usage:

/lore = Displays lore data for all npcs in the tracker that are set as visible

/lore {name} = Displays lore for just the npc in the tracker who's name begins with {name}.
For example:
"/lore Goblin" would display lore for any npcs on tracker with names that begin with goblin (Goblin Hexer, Goblin Blackblade, Goblin Sharpshooter, etc)



Anyhow an example of it working:

Consider the following NPCs from MM1. You can see each one focuses on a different skill (Religion, Arcana and Nature).


The results as seen by my clients:
Tak has a high nature score +8 (and he has an effect that gives him another +4) So you can see he gets multiple pieces of data on the Sahuagin Priest (nature) but no data on the Bloodfire Harpy (Arcana) or the Angel of Valor (Religion).

Khem on the other hand has decent bonuses in all three skills. He gets some data on the Sahuagin Priest (but less than Tak), A fair amount of data on the Angel of Valor (Religion) and a little on the Bloodfire Harpy (Arcana).


Anyhow you can download a copy of it here:

Download the Extension